Hello America,
My name is Tony Whitcomb and I am the Founder and CEO of Expotera.
I have created Expotera, as well as this Blog, to let the good, honest and hardworking Citizens of this Country know that the Revolution has now begun.
Power To The People!!

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

I possess neither Emile Zola’s writing talent nor his penchant
for presidential flattery, but I think I may perhaps lay rightful
claim to some semblance of his well-developed sense of moral
outrage.

I address you as, “president” only as a concession to popular
convention.

In truth, your claimed authority is a fraud, and your actual status
is that of defendant in the matter of the persecution of Bradley
Manning.

From the beginnings of this drama, it was clear to all who cared to
notice that Manning is no criminal but rather the worthy nemesis
of a crime syndicate formally headed by yourself.

He was wrongfully arrested, illegally detained without charge for
a period far in excess of the legally prescribed maximums, and
finally and illegally put on trial not for his alleged criminal acts
but for exposing your crimes and the crimes of your gang, “the
government of the United States.”

Neither the verdict nor the sentence are any surprise; the “not
guilty” verdict on the charge of “aiding the enemy” is clearly
intended as a distraction from the irrefutable fact that the entire
trial was a farce and a sham, conducted in open violation of the
law, and that not a single charge is valid.

The purposes of show trials and the punishments which follow are
to procure convictions and make the public quail in terror before
the awesome power of the state, not to render justice, and in this
respect the Manning court martial puts Stalin to shame.

The Manning show trial is the latest evidence that Thomas Paine
erred in claiming that, “society in every state is a blessing, but
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil.”

While the state is indeed evil, it is far from necessary.

It is wicked through and through.

It is born of coercion, weaned on theft, raised on corruption
and thrives on murder.

In the round it can do not good at all, and any specific good
it may seem to do, must rest on a foundation of evil.

To give me a dollar it picks your pocket for two.

To feed your child lunch it deprives a family of dinner.

If it suffers you and your neighbors to live it murders a village
elsewhere, and if it removes so much as an ounce of weight
from your chest that you might breathe easier, it places a
pound on your shoulders, and orders you to carry.

To willingly tolerate the continued existence of such an evil, or
to purposely delay, impede or oppose that evil’s abolition, is to
become an accessory to that evil.

As an anarchist, it goes without saying that I support the
abolition of the state.

The Manning show trial is one more argument for appending to
that statement the clauses, “as soon as humanly possible” and,
“by any means necessary.”

Thomas L. Knapp is Senior News Analyst at the Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org).

Monday, July 29, 2013

The Nixon Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong was one
such time, when hospitals, schools and dikes were targeted.

The invasion of Iraq was another.

Washington’s silence over the fatal Israeli Commando raid on the
Gaza Peace Flotilla, in which a 19-year-old unarmed American boy
was murdered, was a third.

But I have rarely been as ashamed and disgusted as I was Saturday
reading that US Attorney General Eric Holder had sent a letter to
the Russian minister of justice saying that the US would “not seek
the death penalty” in its espionage case against National Security
Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, promising that even if the
US later brought added charges against Snowden after obtaining him,
they would not include any death penalty, and vowing that if Snowden
were handed over by Russia to the US, he would “not be tortured.”

So it has come to this:

That the United States has to promise (to Russia!) that it will not
torture a prisoner in its control -- a US citizen at that -- and so
therefore that person, Edward Snowden, has no basis for claiming
that he should be “treated as a refugee or granted asylum.”

Why does Holder have to make these pathetic representations to
his counterpart in Russia?

Because Snowden has applied for asylum saying that he is at risk of
torture or execution if returned to the US to face charges for leaking
documents showing that the US government is massively violating
the civil liberties and privacy of every American by monitoring every
American’s electronic communications.

Snowden has made that claim in seeking asylum because he knows
that another whistleblower, Pvt. Bradley Manning, was in fact
tortured by the US for months, and held without trial in solitary
confinement in a Marine military brig for nearly a year, part of the
time naked, before being finally put on trial in a kangaroo court,
where the judge is as much prosecutor as jurist, and where his guilt
was declared in advance by the President of the United States -- the
same president who has also already publicly declared Snowden guilty
too.

It is incredibly shameful that we US citizens have to admit that
we live in a country that tortures its prisoners, that casually
executes people who are mentally retarded, who are innocent,
who had defense attorneys who slept through their clients’
trials, whose prosecutors slept with the judge, who were denied
access to DNA evidence that could have proven their innocence,
or who were convicted based upon the lies of prosecutors and
prosecution witnesses.

This country’s “justice” system has become so perverted and
politically tainted that the rest of the world, including Russia,
knows that Snowden is telling the truth when he says he cannot
hope to receive a fair trial here.

Indeed, Congress has passed laws, and the President has signed
laws, giving this government the power to lock someone like
Snowden up indefinitely without trial, to torture him, and even
to kill him, not through a jury decision on capital punishment,
but simply on the basis of a secret “finding” by the President
that he has aided or abetted terrorism.

No wonder Russia and several other countries, including Venezuela,
Bolivia and Nicaragua, have offered or are considering offering
Snowden asylum.

And no wonder that, in its obsession with getting its tyrannical
hands on him, this government is willing to promise not to kill
him or torture him (for what a promise from the US government
is worth, especially since when Holder makes his promise of "no
torture" we have to remember that Holder and the US don't define
such horrors as waterboarding, stress positions, keeping someone
naked in an unheated cell, or employing prolonged sensory
deprivation are not "torture").

Shame and anger are the only appropriate responses to that letter
from Holder.

If this were a country that honored the rule of law, Attorney General Holder would not need to promise not to torture.

He would need only to point to the US Constitution, with its ban on
“cruel and unusual punishment.”

He would not need to promise a fair trial to Snowden, with no
capital punishment on any charges.

He could point instead to the Constitution’s promise of a
presumption of innocence and of a public trial by a jury of
the accused’s peers, to make the case against the granting
of asylum.

In such a country, someone like Snowden, with the help of a crack
legal team, would have a fair shot at proving to a jury his innocence
of the government’s frivolous espionage charges.

He’d have a fair chance of convincing at least one juror of his
absolute innocence of any crime, making his conviction impossible.

But that is not what this country is, especially today.

In today’s US courts, we know the “Justice” Department would
seek to bar testimony about Snowden’s motives in leaking the
documents he downloaded from the NSA’s computers.

They would ask the judge to limit defense arguments and testimony
in the case to the narrow issue of whether or not he downloaded
and leaked files, not to whether those files exposed Constitutional
violations and needed to be brought to the public’s attention.

Our Judges, nominated by Presidents, and confirmed by Senators,
Democrat and Republican, who want jurists who favor government
secrecy and who generally side with the government against the
people, can be counted on to grant the government’s motions.

In such circumstances, a defendant like Snowden, facing charges of
espionage or theft of government secrets, has no ability to defend himself.

The trial would be like in a Lewis Carroll event: “Verdict first, trial later!”

Hopefully President Vladimir Putin will not be pressured by the US
into pretending that Snowden has nothing to fear in going back to
face “justice” in the US.

It is bad enough that we Americans have to hang our heads in
shame as our Attorney General pretends, against all evidence
to the contrary, that there is still a fair legal system operating
in the US, and that the US respects human rights and the rule
of law.

We should not have to also endure yet another kangaroo court trial,
this time of Edward Snowden.

Snowden should be granted asylum in Russia, or should be allowed
to travel to one of the other countries of his choice that have had
the courage to offer him asylum.

If we’re going to have trials on the issue of spying in the US, let
them be of Holder himself, and of President Obama.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Mat 24:3-5,10-11 (NIV) ..."Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"
Jesus answered, "Watch out that no one deceives you, for many will
come in my name,.. At that time many will turn away from the faith
... and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people."

As spiritual adultery increases in the church, false prophets will
flourish as highly sought after speakers, and as Christians accept
more of these false teachings indiscriminately, many will fall away,
believing in a phony "faith".

Since we have been warned, it might be wise to seek insight into how
to discern false prophecy--what are false prophets likely to say? What
are they like?

Signs And Wonders

Deut. 18:20-22 (NIV) "A prophet who presumes to speak in my name
anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks
in the name of other gods, must be put to death. You may say to
yourselves, 'How can we know when a message has not been spoken
by the Lord?' If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord
does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has
not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously..."

But what if it does come true? In fact, aren't we specifically warned that near the End of the Age many will show great signs and wonders?
What then? Are signs and wonders "fruit"? Effective witchcraft is not
the "fruit" we are to look for (Gal 5:22-23).

Signs and wonders are not to be sought (Mat 16:4).

Does the prophet call for repentance, for holiness and loyalty to
Christ? Or is he providing an enticing strip-tease away from God?

Deut 13:1-3 (NIV) "If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams,
appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or
wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes
place, and he says, 'Let us follow other gods' (gods you have not
known) 'and let us worship them,' you must not listen to the words
of that prophet or dreamer. The Lord your God is testing you to
find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your
soul."

The Enemy Is Among You...

Deut. 13:5 -8 (NIV) "That prophet or dreamer must be put to death,
because he preached rebellion against the Lord your God... He has
tried to turn you from the way the Lord your God commanded you
to follow. You must purge the evil from among you. If your very own
brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest
friend secretly entices you,.. do not yield to him or listen to him..."

Jer 9:2-6 (NIV) "...For they are all adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people. They make ready their tongue like a bow, to shoot lies; it is
not by truth that they triumph in the land. They go from one sin to
another; they do not acknowledge me," declares the Lord. "Beware
of your friends; do not trust your brothers. For every brother is a
deceiver, and every friend a slanderer. Friend deceives friend, and
no one speaks the truth... You live in the midst of deception; in
their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me," declares the Lord.

Jer 23:33-36 (NIV) "When these people, or a prophet or a priest,
ask you, 'What is the oracle of the Lord?' say to them, 'What
oracle?..' You must not mention 'the oracle of the Lord' again,
because every man's own word becomes his oracle and so you
distort the words of the living God, the Lord Almighty, our God."

False Prophets, And Their Followers, Reject The Truth

Neh 9:26 (NIV) "But they were disobedient and rebelled ...They killed your prophets, who had admonished them in order to turn them back
to you; they committed awful blasphemies."

Isa 30:9-11,15 (NIV) These are rebellious people, deceitful children,
children unwilling to listen to the Lord's instruction. They say to the
seers, "See no more visions!" and to the prophets, "Give us no more
visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions.
Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the
Holy One of Israel!" This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One
of Israel says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in
quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it."

The Message Of False Prophecy: "Peace, Peace"--Without Repentance

Jer 5:11-13 (NIV) "The house of Israel and the house of Judah
have been utterly unfaithful to me," declares the Lord. "They
have lied about the Lord; they said, 'He will do nothing! No
harm will come to us; we will never see sword or famine.' The
prophets are but wind and the word is not in them..." (Ez 13:7,
De 29:19)

Jer 23:16-18 (NIV) This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Do not
listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill
you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds,
not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who
despise me, 'The Lord says: You will have peace.' And to all
who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, 'No harm
will come to you.' But which of them has stood in the council of
the Lord to see or to hear his word? Who has listened and heard
his word?"

Jer 23:21-22 (NIV) "I did not send these prophets, yet they have
run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have
prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, they would have
proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them
from their evil ways and from their evil deeds."

Jer 8:6-9 (NIV) "I have listened attentively, but they do not say
what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, saying, 'What
have I done?'.. My people do not know the requirements of the
Lord. How can you say, 'We are wise...' Since they have rejected
the word of the Lord, what kind of wisdom do they have?"

Lam 2:14 (NIV) "The visions of your prophets were false and worthless; they did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The oracles they gave you were false and misleading."

Luke 6:26 (NAS) "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for
in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets."

Jer 14:14 (NIV) "The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I
have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They
are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries, and
the delusion of their own minds."

Jer 28:8-9 (NIV) [Jeremiah identifying Hananiah as a false prophet:]
"From early times the prophets who preceded you and me have
prophesied war, disaster and plague against many countries and
great kingdoms. But the prophet who prophesies peace will be
recognized as one truly sent by the Lord only if his prediction comes
true." (Jer 28:15-17 tells the outcome.)

Micah 2:11 (NIV) "If a liar and deceiver comes and says, 'I will
prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,' he would be just the
prophet for this people!"

Prophets For Profit

Micah 3:5 (NIV) This is what the Lord says: "As for the prophets who
lead my people astray, if one feeds them, they proclaim 'peace'; if he
does not, they prepare to wage war against him."

Jer 8:10-12 (NIV) "From the least to the greatest all are greedy for
gain; prophet and priest alike, all practice deceit. They dress the
wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,'
they say, when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their
loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even
know how to blush."

Eph 5:6 (Jer) Do not let anyone deceive you with empty arguments:
it is for this loose living that God's wrath comes down on those who
rebel against him. Make sure you are not included with them.

John 10:12 (Jer) "The hired man, since he is not the shepherd and
the sheep do not belong to him, abandons the sheep and runs away
as soon as he sees a wolf coming, and then the wolf attacks and
scatters the sheep."

Eze 13:1-16 (Read from the NIV about the big whitewash and the
storm approaching.)

Jer 23:30-32 (NIV) "Therefore," declares the Lord, "I am against the
prophets who steal from one another words supposedly from me.
Yes,.. I am against the prophets who wag their own tongues and yet
declare, 'The Lord declares.' Indeed, I am against those who prophesy
false dreams,.. They tell them and lead my people astray with their
reckless lies, yet I did not send or appoint them. They do not benefit
these people in the least," declares the Lord.

Going To The Dogs

Mat 7:15, 20-23 (NIV) "Watch out for false prophets. They come to
you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves...
Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them... Many will say to me
on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name, and in
your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will
tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers!'"

Isa 56:10-11 (NIV) "Israel's watchmen are blind, they all lack
knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark; they lie
around and dream. They are shepherds who lack understanding;
they all turn to their own way, each seeks his own gain."

2 Cor 11:19-20 (Jer) Oh, you're tolerant all right! . Yes even to
tolerating somebody who makes slaves of you, makes you feed
him, imposes on you, orders you about and slaps you in the face.

Eze 13:17-19,22 (NIV) "Now, son of man, set your face against the daughters of your people who prophesy out of their own imagination.
Prophesy against them and say,.. By lying to my people, who listen to
lies, you have killed those who should not have died and have spared
those who should not live... Because you disheartened the righteous
with your lies, when I had brought them no grief, and because you
encouraged the wicked not to turn from their evil ways and so save
their lives..."

Jer 23:14-15 (NIV) "...They commit adultery and live a lie. They
strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his
wickedness... Therefore, this is what the Lord Almighty says
concerning the prophets: 'I will make them eat bitter food and
drink poisoned water, because from the prophets of Jerusalem
ungodliness has spread throughout the land.'"

Evil "Unleashed"

Jer 23:9-11 (NIV) "Concerning the prophets:.. 'The land is full
of adulterers;.. The prophets follow an evil course and use their
power unjustly. Both prophet and priest are godless; even in my
temple I find their wickedness,' declares the Lord."

2 Cor 11:13-15 (Phi) "God's messengers?" They are counterfeits
of the real thing, dishonest practitioners masquerading as the
messengers of Christ. Nor do their tactics surprise me when I
consider how Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It
is only to be expected that his agents shall have the appearance
of ministers of righteousness--but they will get what they deserve
in the end.

1 Tim 4:1-2 (Phi) God's spirit specificaly tells us that in later days there will be men who abandon the true faith and allow themselves
to be spiritually seduced by teachings of demons, teachings given
by men who are lying hypocrites, whose consciences are as dead as
seared flesh.

Discernment

Jer 23:25-29 (NIV) "I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy
lies in my name. They say, 'I had a dream! I had a dream!' How long
will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy
the delusions of their own minds?.. Let the prophet who has a dream
tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully.
For what has straw to do with grain?" declares the Lord. "Is not my
word like fire," declares the Lord, "and like a hammer that breaks a
rock in pieces?"

2 Pet 2:1 (NEB) But Israel had false prophets as well as true; and
you likewise will have false teachers among you. They will import
disastrous heresies, disowning the Master who bought them, and
bringing swift disaster on their own heads.

Col 2:18-19 (Jer) Do not be taken in by people who like groveling to angels, and worshipping them; people like that are always going on
about some vision they have had, inflating themselves to a false
importance with their worldly outlook. A man of this sort is not
united to the head...

Eph 4:14-15 (Jer) Then we shall not be children any longer, or tossed
one way and another and carried along by every wind of doctrine, at
the mercy of all the tricks men play and their cleverness in practicing
deceit. If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways
into Christ, who is the head.

1 Jn 2:20-26 (Phi) God has given you all a certain amount of spiritual insight, and indeed I have not written this warning as if I were
writing to men who don't know what error is. I write because your
eyes are clear enough to discern a lie when you come across it...
For yourselves keep faithful to what you heard at the beginning.
I had to write to you about these men who try to lead you astray.

Acts 20: 29-31 (Jer) "I know quite well that when I have gone fierce wolves will invade you and have no mercy on the flock. Even from
your own ranks their will be men coming forward with a travesty of
the truth on their lips to induce the disciples to follow them. So be
on your guard..."

Mat 10:16-17 (Phi) "Here am I sending you out like sheep with
wolves all round you; so be as wise as serpents and harmless as
doves. But be on your guard against men..."

Luke 10:3 (NIV) "Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves."

Mat 24:25 (Phi) "False christs and false prophets are going to appear
and produce great signs and wonders to mislead, if it were possible,
even God's own people. Listen, I am warning you."

Saturday, July 27, 2013

After the details of My Lai, a Vietnamese village that was destroyed
and men, women and children killed by U.S. Soldiers came out, and
the military had selected their fall guy for the massacre, Lt. Calley,
we in the Army were subjected to constant classes on when to follow
or when not to follow orders.

We were told that there are legal orders and illegal orders, and
that following illegal orders, would be well...illegal.

If an enlisted man followed what he knew to be an illegal order, not only would the person that gave the illegal order be held responsible,
the person that carried out the illegal order could also be charged.

It all sounds good, but it reality it is as the Brits say, "A bit of a sticky wicket".

This is because in the military, they also teach you to follow orders
immediately, if there is a question about what orders to follow, bring
it up later.

In combat, when your life is on the line, and also the lives of
your comrades on the battlefield with you, the best thing is to
follow the orders even if it means putting your own life on the
line.

This is because the "fog of war" in the midst of battle is usually
better seen (but not always) by the command that has a better
picture of what is taking place.

We were given class after class as to what is an "illegal order".

Discussions were held, and looking back on it, the classes were really
a reaction to the media's portrayal of the military during and directly
after the My Lai trial, for public consumption, and to raise the morale
of the troops when many in the military were ashamed of atrocities
committed in Vietnam.

This was a way to let the public and the troops know that the
military was addressing some of the unspeakable horrors of
war and they were trying to do something about it.

In reality, this was a public relations operation.

The idea was that if a soldier saw something going on that was not
legal according to the Geneva Convention on the Laws of War, that
soldier should go to a higher authority and report it.

If he didn't have the time, he should refuse to participate and if it
was within his power, he should try to stop it.

This all sounds reasonable, but in the military, sometimes it is not
as cut and dry as one would think.

Now, in this day and age, we have a military that has seen continuous combat operations for over a decade.

Most of the invasions and operations are, in reality, contrary to the Geneva Conventions themselves.

This places the American soldier in a predicament from the start.

The question being that if one enlists and takes the oath of
enlistment to obey the orders of the officers above him and
to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies
foreign and domestic, when your nation is breaking both U.S.
and international law in the first place, how do you obey the
orders of those officers that give them?

Now we had situation where a Private First Class was allowed to
access sensitive information that showed beyond a reasonable
doubt that the American military was committing atrocities and
crimes that were against not only his moral code, but were
against military law and the Geneva Conventions.

This was during a period when the U.S. Military was committing
crime after crime by using depleted uranium (a weapon of mass
destruction), and destroying entire cities as in Fallujah with air
strikes, artillery and armor, killing men women and children
indiscriminately and for all intents and purposes, destroying the
city.

Meanwhile, no soldiers were reporting crimes to their superiors
(that we know about).

It was business as usual in this new type of hostilities against other nations in undeclared wars that the U.S. euphemistically calls, "The
War on Terror".

Soldiers were seemingly following illegal orders on a daily basis
and "doing their duty".

This Private First Class was in a terrible quandary.

It must have seemed to him that with his access to all of this
sensitive information that allowed him to see a larger picture of
what was really going on, that his nation was indeed committing
grievous war crimes.

When he brought this matter to his superiors, he was ignored.

This, in reality, is what many soldiers experience when confronted
with war in all of its horrific forms.

The difference here is that this lowly Private decided that he was
going to expose these crimes.

Like I said, in this day and age, long after the My Lai massacre,
this type of behavior is unheard of.

According to the American Government, the enemy we face
is more horrific and dangerous than any we have ever faced.

After all, didn't Muslims fell the Twin Towers and kill innocent Americans and aren't they plotting continuously to commit acts
of terror against the United States?

As far as the military was concerned, the gloves were off and
according to the President at the time; "Either you are with us
or against us".

It must have taken a supreme act if courage for Bradley Manning
to finally release his information to the only people that seemed
to care what was happening in Iraq, Wikileaks.

Now he finds himself in front of a Court Martial after being tortured
for months by the military by being forced to remain in solitary
confinement for months, while remaining naked, in a cold dark cell,
being treated like an animal in direct violation to all military law and
the Geneva Conventions in regard to treatment of prisoners.

Most of his defense has been deemed by the people in charge of his
Court Martial to be inadmissible, and this leaves him defenseless
against the power of the United States military that had once
proclaimed that if a soldier saw wrongdoing and violations of the
Geneva Convention on the Laws of War, that soldier should go to
a higher authority and report it, and if it was within his power, he
should try to stop it.

The Private did report it, but the report of these violations fell on
deaf ears.

Now he will pay the price of doing the right thing.

Doing the right thing, not only to assuage his own sense of right and wrong, but doing the right thing according to what the United States
Army once told their soldiers.

This is a new age however.

An age of masking wars as defensive actions, even though they are
in reality invasions of other nations against all International Law, the
Geneva Conventions are no longer relevant.

We have seen an observer call on Apache attack helicopters to fire
on journalists walking with their cameras on a city street, and once
they were wounded and lying on the street and when people ran to
help them, the Apaches were ordered to fire on the rescuers.

Manning let the world see this. Still, no charges were filed against
the individuals responsible for these actions.

It is Bradley Manning that will suffer for these actions.

The American military is using this to issue a warning to their
soldiers that conscience and adherence to the laws of war will
no longer be tolerated.

This is what the trail of Private First Class Bradley Manning means.

Timothy Gatto is the former Chairman of the Liberal Party of America and is he a retired Army Sergeant. Timothy is also the
author of Kimchee Days or Stoned Cold Warriors.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The statement Friday by President Obama, during a carefully staged
“surprise” appearance in the White House briefing room, was a
calculated effort to exploit, for definite political ends, popular anger
over last week’s acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer.

Martin, a 17-year-old African American, was shot and killed by
neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in February
of 2012.

Obama sought to accomplish a number of related goals.

His remarks were coordinated with nationwide protests over the
verdict, with the aim of associating himself with the victim’s family.

At the same time, he attempted to shore up dwindling public faith
in a criminal justice system that virtually guaranteed a not-guilty
verdict.

He vouched for the trial and verdict, while signaling there
would be no further federal action on the case.

Above all, Obama sought to divert public attention away from
any consideration of the underlying social and class issues,
rising poverty and social inequality, the systematic promotion
of individual violence and right-wing vigilantism, in favor
of an exclusive focus on the racial aspects of the tragedy.

The commander in chief of the most powerful and aggressive
military in the world began by dressing himself in the garb of
the victim.

“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” he said.

He made repeated references to the “African American
community” in the course of his 18-minute-long remarks.

The presentation of America as an aggregate of “communities”
based on ethnicity is fundamentally reactionary.

Its main purpose is to cover over the deep class divisions that
cut across all ethnic and racial lines in America.

It lumps together privileged multimillionaires such as Al Sharpton,
Jesse Jackson and Obama himself with the masses of African
American workers and youth who have been the hardest hit by
the crisis of American capitalism and the policies of the Obama
administration.

Obama does not speak for Trayvon Martin.

He speaks for a different social class, one whose interests are
deeply antagonistic to those of the Martin family and the broad
mass of working people and youth of all races and ethnicities.

The same day that Obama gave his remarks, the White House
flatly rebuffed suggestions that the federal government
should come to the assistance of the city of Detroit,
forced into bankruptcy last week.

Hundreds of thousands of working people in the city, most of
them African Americans, face further punitive cuts in public
services, jobs and living standards.

The Obama administration, which supplied trillions to the Wall Street banks and tens of billions for the auto bosses, offers nothing at all to
the people of Detroit.

There is another reactionary dimension to Obama’s harping on race.

He cited the dismay of “the African American community” over the
acquittal of Zimmerman, as though only African Americans would be
outraged at the prospect of a black youth, guilty of nothing, being
stalked and killed, and the perpetrator going scot-free.

The truth is that the outcome of the trial was deeply unsettling to
wide layers of the population.

Obama’s intervention in the Trayvon Martin case was hailed by the corporate-controlled media as an event of transcendent political importance.

The president supposedly gave a glimpse of his innermost feelings,
demonstrating political “courage” and “moral leadership,” according
to the pundits on the Sunday morning television talk shows.

What cynicism!

This is a government that has repeatedly asserted the “right” to kill
its political antagonists overseas, including American citizens, using
drone-fired missiles.

It is engaged in systematic spying on the communications of
the population of the entire world.

The American government is, as Martin Luther King Jr. once
observed, the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet.

In its domestic policies, the Obama administration has systematically defended the interests of the super-rich against the working class
and middle class population of all races and ethnic origins.

Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, immigrant, all sections of the working class have borne the brunt of the economic crisis that followed the
2008 financial crash.

While Wall Street profits and CEO bonuses have been fully restored,
the jobs and living standards of working people have never recovered.

The Obama administration and the corporate-controlled media
are pushing for a “national discussion on race.”

This is nothing more than an effort to prevent any discussion of
the class issues, in a country where the socioeconomic divisions
are more acute than at any time in a century.

In his remarks, Obama made no mention of unemployment or the
social crisis in America.

Nor did he offer any policies.

There were no proposals to mitigate poverty and social misery, to provide jobs for the unemployed, or to remedy the disproportionate impact of the economic crisis on the most oppressed sections of the working class, including African American workers.

There is a tremendous amount of cynicism, self-interest and
hypocrisy in the official reaction to the killing of Trayvon Martin,
including from groups like the National Action Network, the pro-
Democratic Party organization run by Sharpton that organized the
demonstrations over the weekend.

A whole layer of fake “progressives” whose stock-in-trade
is identity politics, including well-off African American
politicians, pundits and professionals, is using the tragic
killing of Martin to promote the politics of race, upon which
their salaries and sinecures depend.

The aim is to advance the interests of more privileged
layers of the upper-middle class.

Under conditions where millions of people are coming to an
understanding that there is something deeply rotten and
dysfunctional about the existing economic and political
system, and the class chasm separating the financial
aristocracy from the broad masses of the people is emerging
ever more clearly, these forces harp on the issue of race
in order to sow divisions within the working class and
channel social opposition back behind the Democratic Party.

The central task of the working class is to free itself from the
political influence of these pro-capitalist elements and build an
independent mass political movement that will unite working
people of all races and ethnic backgrounds in a common struggle
against the profit system.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

The broad case establishes a precedent that publishing national security related information about the United States is espionage.

Julian Assange, on Russia Today, June 2013.

By Binoy Kampmark
Dissident Voice
July 20th, 2013

The Manning Trial, with all its state-like ghastliness, the prosecution pawing and bruising those who disagree with it into submission, has
thrown up a few distinct and disturbing trends.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 claims there is nothing new under the sun, and we
have been greeted to the predictable prosecution seeking to paint
WikiLeaks as the spectre haunting global security.

This is backhanded flattery of sorts – the organisation has to be seen
by the security establishment as innately wicked and corrosive to
state “values” (constipated secrecy, sinister deception, orchestrated dissimulation).

It is therefore incumbent that every feature of the WikiLeaks’

experiment be attacked: its journalism (qualified or otherwise)

its sources, its backers.

Army Private first class Bradley Manning is but the important conduit, and this entire enterprise on the part of the U.S. government is an
attempt to punish the flow of information all cogs and channels.

It follows that the entire chain of information has to be shown to
be inimical to U.S. interests.

Jihrleah Showman, one of Manning’s former supervisors, was trotted
out to suggest that the American flag meant nothing to the private.

Ignore the information; attack the man.

“I tapped the flag on my shoulder and asked him what it meant.
He said the flag meant nothing to him and he did not consider
himself to have allegiance to this country or any other people.”
Snowman’s inability to detect anything parochial rendered her
“distraught”.

Defense attorney David Coombs has done his best to shift gears
on his opposition.

He filed motions asking the court to dismiss the charge of aiding
and abetting the enemy, the other being alleged violations of the
federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Both are vital aspects of the case, not only against Manning, but WikiLeaks.

It is axiomatic that projects of power require necessary enemies,
and here, the enemy is writ large.

As Coombs explained, “The government’s whole argument seems to
be premised on creating WikiLeaks as a bad organisation.” Indeed,
an organisation with “evil” intent.

On Thursday, Colonel Denise Lind ruled that from Ft. Meade,
Maryland that those charges would stand.

This does not mean that she will be swayed by them, but hope
springs eternal.

In an attempt to cast a bomb on the prosecution cause to
disparage WikiLeaks, Coombs called on the expert services
of Harvard University jurist Yochai Benkler, to consider the
question about the role of the organisation in the newer
journalism.

Benkler proved accommodating, arguing that a guilty conviction in
the case of Manning would be costly to world reporting, imposing
an onerous burden on the “willingness of people of good conscience
but not infinite courage to come forward.”

Fortune should also favour the not so brave.

Benkler discussed, in rather expansive fashion, the definition as
to what, “handing” over material to the enemy might constitute.

An organisation with the means of attracting a global audience
would mean “that any leak to a media organisation that can be
read by any enemy anywhere in the world, becomes automatically
aiding the enemy.”

Benkler is good value, at least if you are a free speech advocate.

He quotes in a paper (in progress) for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review a few choice words from Theodore Roosevelt.

Teddy might well have been Uncle Sam’s loud sissy, to use Gore
Vidal’s term of reference, but he could drag out a gem or two, a
few of which can be found in his “The Man With the Muck-rake”
(April 14, 1906):

“There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the
muck rake; and there are times and places where this service
is the most needed of all the services that can be performed.”

The New Journalism used to be a rather elegant phrase to
describe the adventurous, richly gleamed prose of its followers,
led by Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, truth gathered
through descriptive and inventive prose, often fueled by
stimulants.

The newer journalism forged in the WikiLeaks foundry is of a
somewhat different type, forensic, keen less on ornamentation
than stripping away the deceptive façade.

The state need not be indulged with any invention – enough has
been done there by the spin doctors, surgeons and dentists.

They now feel a sense of dread at this unveiling, with sources to
be seen and the lie, rendered visible.

Beware the muckraker.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I
had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort.

I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize,
and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any
time. That is the power to change people’s fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law.

The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country,
Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and
numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive,
pervasive surveillance.

While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my
government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is
not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair.

These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice –
that it must be seen to be done.

The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945:

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national
obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the
duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and
humanity from occurring."

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to
correct this wrongdoing.

I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets.
I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my
safety.

Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of
us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked
the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all
of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have
no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the
United States of America have attempted to make an example of
me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have.

I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political
expression.

The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists.

It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of
its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement –
the Law of Nations.

It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up
for my human rights and the UN asylum system.

It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies
to ground a Latin American president’s plane in search for a political
refugee.

These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the
dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every
person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek
and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum.

These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua,
and Ecuador, have my gratitude and respect for being the first
to stand against human rights violations carried out by the
powerful rather than the powerless.

By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of
intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world.

It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend
my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or
asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in
the future.

With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela’s
President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state
has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy
that asylum.

As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European
and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act
outside the law, and this behavior persists today.

This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin
America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our
shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents
a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed.

Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees
of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel
to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until
such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is
permitted.

I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be
accepted favorably.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

We Indict the US Government for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

By The World Can't Wait
Information Clearing House
Thursday, July 11, 2013

The U.S. government is prosecuting Bradley Manning and Edward
Snowden who exposed war crimes and crimes against humanity
by the U.S.

Now is the time to issue a powerful people's indictment of the
crimes of the US government and counter the war on truth tellers.

We urge people to go out publicly in every way they can think of.

Read these indictments aloud on street corners, post them up online
and on paper, tweet them, and participate in creative protests to
bring the indispensable peoples' voice and actions into this politically
intolerable scene.

The Indictments

We indict the U.S. government: For using mass surveillance on
whole populations, with the intent to chill protest and dissent.

We indict the U.S. government: For indefinite detention and
torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and other sites including
torturing hunger strikers with force-feeding.

We indict the U.S. government: For wars of aggression, unjust
occupations, and the use of drones, killing hundreds of thousands
of civilians around the world

We indict the U.S. government: For the mass incarceration of
over 2.4 million people in the United States, mainly Black and
Latino, a program with a genocidal impact against these groups,
including torture, solitary confinement, and unjust executions.

We indict the U.S. government: For being a large contributor
to climate change, sabotoging international efforts to curb
greenhouse emissions and taking no real meaningful action
to reverse the trajectory.

We indict the US government: for torturing, intimidating
and prosecuting whistleblowers while covering up and not
prosecuting those responsible for the war crimes and crimes
against humanity.

We pledge mass public opposition to the crimes of our government,
taking inspiration and finding common cause with those who around
the world are rising up against oppression.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

More than 160 years ago, the greatest abolitionist in U.S. history,
the escaped slave Frederick Douglass, addressed the Rochester
Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

Douglass asked those gathered, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?”

His words bear repeating this Independence Day, as the United States asserts unprecedented authority to wage war globally, to spy on
everyone, everywhere.

Independence Day should serve not as a blind celebration of the
government, but as a moment to reflect on the central place in
our history of grass-roots democracy movements, which have
preserved and expanded the rights proclaimed in the opening
lines of the Declaration of Independence:

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Douglass answered his question about the Fourth of July, to those
gathered abolitionists:

“To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of
rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants,
brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow
mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings,
with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere
bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to
cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There
is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and
bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very
hour.”

Douglass not only denounced the hypocrisy of slavery in a democracy,
but worked diligently to build the abolitionist movement.

He fought for women’s suffrage as well. These were movements that
have shaped the United States.

The civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s set a permanent
example of what can be achieved by grass-roots action, even in the
face of systemic, violent repression.

Today, movements continue to shape our society.

The trial of George Zimmerman, accused of murdering Trayvon
Martin, would not be happening now in Florida were it not for a
mass movement.

Sparked by the seeming official indifference to the shooting death
of yet another young, African-American male, nationwide protests
erupted, leading to the appointment of a special prosecutor.

A month and a half after Martin was killed, Zimmerman was
charged with second-degree murder.

Gay men and lesbians have seen sweeping changes in their legal
rights, as same-sex marriage becomes legal in state after state,
the U.S. military has dropped its official discrimination against
homosexuality, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act was
recently judged unconstitutional.

Again, undergirding this progress are the decades of movement-
building and grass-roots organizing.

In Egypt, the revolution dubbed the Arab Spring continues, with
mass protests forcing out President Mohamed Morsi. Where this
goes now, with the military in power, is yet to be determined.

As my “Democracy Now!” colleague, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
tweeted from the streets of Cairo on the night of the military
coup, “After two and a half years, Egypt just went back to
square one in its post-Mubarak transition.”

The United States has been for well over two centuries a beacon
for those around the world suffering under tyranny. But the U.S.
also has been the prime global opponent of grass-roots democratic
movements.

Amazingly, South African President Nelson Mandela and the African
National Congress were not taken off the U.S. terrorist watch list
until 2008.

When the people of Chile elected Salvador Allende, the U.S. backed
a coup against him on Sept. 11, 1973, ushering in the dictatorship
of Augusto Pinochet, who murdered thousands of his own citizens,
crushing dissent.

Sadly, drone strikes and the U.S.-run prison at Guantanamo are
not historical references; they are current crimes committed by
our own government.

Now, National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden,
as far as we know, is stranded in the Moscow airport, his U.S
passport canceled.

He has admitted to revealing a vast, global surveillance regime
that has outraged citizens and governments the world over.

He joins in his plight imprisoned whistle-blower Bradley Manning,
who faces life in prison, being court-martialed now for leaking
the largest trove of classified documents in U.S. history.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has now spent more than a
year cooped up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

These three are central to the exposure of some of the most
undemocratic practices of the U.S. government.

More than 100 protests are planned across the U.S. this July
Fourth weekend, in opposition to the NSA’s surveillance programs.

These protests are part of the continuum of pro-democracy
struggles around the world.

In closing his Rochester, N.Y., speech, Douglass sounded an
optimistic note, saying, “Notwithstanding the dark picture
I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do
not despair of this country.”

Grass-roots justice movements are the hope, the beacon, the force
that will save this country.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 1,100 stations in North America.

She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the
“Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish
Parliament in December

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

On July 4, 1776, over fifty people signed the Declaration of
Independence.

They were openly resisting the legal authority of the King of
England. Thousands joined them. They were outlaws.

They were breaking the laws of England and risked capture,
prison and even death for their belief in independence,
equality, unalienable rights, and liberty.

They were far from perfect as slavery, the slaughter and removal
of Native Americans and the exclusion of women demonstrated.

But they did resist their globally powerful government.

Who are the true patriots of today?

Not the flag-wrapped politicians who send other people’s children
off to be killed or disabled in wars to make the world safe for big
businesses.

Not the flag-waving profiteers who view their successes as their
due.

Not the crowds who chant USA, USA, USA, upon learning of death
of Osama bin Laden.

Not the religious hypocrites who worship this nation and its flag
as yet another one of their gods.

The true patriots are people like Rosa Parks.

People who courageously resist illegal and unjust actions of
government.

They are who should be celebrated today.

Here are a dozen of the thousands who are courageously resisting
illegal and unjust government actions.

They risk their freedom to challenge the state for freedom and
truth and justice.

They are the true patriots.

Edward Snowden is a 30 year old risking a lifetime in prison to
expose massive extensive wrongful secret government surveillance
of hundreds of millions in the US and even more globally.

Rosanell Eaton, 92, a 70 year member of the NAACP, was
arrested on June 24th in North Carolina in one of the weekly
actions resisting government cutbacks and mistreatment of
the unemployed.

Nearly 600 others have also been arrested in the last two months
in the NAACP led protests.

Tim DeChristopher, 29, was just released from two years in federal
prison for disrupting an improper government auction of oil and gas
rights around national parks in Utah by making false bids for leases.

Bradley Manning is a 25 year old Army soldier who has been in jail
since May 2010 because he exposed evidence of illegal US airstrikes,
murder, and other embarrassing confidential political information
about the US and other governments.

U.S. Army Private Kimberly Rivera is in military prison in Colorado
after she refused to participate further in the illegal war in Iraq
and moved to Canada where she spoke out publicly against the war.

Rivera has been described as a prisoner of conscience by
Amnesty International.

Sister Megan Rice is an 83 year old catholic nun who is in
a Georgia jail facing up to thirty five years in prison.

Sister Rice was convicted of federal sabotage for peacefully
protesting against US nuclear weapons by walking onto the
Oak Ridge Nuclear Production facility outside Knoxville TN.

Two who walked with her, Greg Bortje-Obed, 57, and Michael
Walli, 63, both veterans of the US military, are also jailed
awaiting sentencing.

The three cut through several fences and painted peace slogans
on the supposedly secure building storing hundreds of metric
tons of nuclear weapon materials to expose and symbolically
disarm the thousands of nuclear weapons the US is upgrading,
each of which would end life as we know it.

Glenn Greenwald is a hard charging journalist who has been
challenging US misdeeds around the world for years.

People in Congress and the media are calling for his arrest on
criminal charges for helping expose the truth about crimes by
government.

Joy First is a Wisconsin grandmother of five who has been arrested
over 30 times for protesting against the Iraq invasion, the war in
Afghanistan, the US drone assassinations.

Rafil Dhafir is a NY doctor who is in federal prison after being
convicted of providing humanitarian and financial aid to people
in Iraq in violation of US sanctions.

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink, has been arrested
numerous times for challenging injustices by the US and other
governments.

Most recently she was thrown out of President Obama’s speech
on National Defense after interrupting him by shouting questions
about Guantanamo prisoners and drones.

Robert Chantal, 60, is in prison in Georgia for jumping over the
fence outside Fort Benning GA to protest the extensive human
rights abuses by graduates of the US Western Hemisphere Institute
for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) formerly the US Army School of
the Americas, located on that base.

Over 300 resisters have been sentenced for federal crimes in GA for
protesting there with School of Americas Watch and many more have
been arrested in DC.

Thousands of other people are resisting unlawful, illegal and unjust government action all over the country.

The Keystone XL pipeline resistance has resulted in arrests of over a thousand people in Texas, Oklahoma, Chicago, DC and other venues.

Anti-drone resistance has resulted in hundreds of arrests in Syracuse, Nevada, California, DC and Wisconsin.

Hundreds of immigrant activists have been arrested in protests
across the country.

Arrests in DC continue to challenge the holding of prisoners in
Guantanamo.

Resisters continue to be arrested at nuclear weapon production and
deployment sites in California, Washington, Las Vegas, the Pentagon,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Occupy movement resulted in the arrest of over seven thousand
people.

So, this July 4th, celebrate the true resistance to unjust and unlawful government.

Bill Quigley is a professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans and Associate Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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About Me

My name is Tony Whitcomb. I am a Social Entrepreneur, Founder and CEO of Expotera.
I created Expotera and this Blog, to teach Corporate America and our Government, a few basic lessons in Ethics, Honesty, Macro Economics and Social Justice.
Power To The People!!